No one can quite be sure what to expect from Taylor Heinicke as he makes his first start of the season against the Giants Thursday night.
The Washington Football Team trailed 10-6 when he entered Sunday's game against the Chargers in the second quarter, in relief of Ryan Fitzpatrick, who went down with a hip injury. Heinicke moved the offense while completing 11 of 15 passes (73.33%) for 122 yards, a touchdown and no interceptions, but Washington ultimately came up short, 20-16.
For quarterbacks, entering a game off the bench is very different from starting, driving the ship from start to finish and establishing the tone on offense. Thursday's game against the Giants will mark Heinicke's first regular-season start since 2018, a three-interception game in Carolina that Heinicke would probably rather forget, and just the second of his winding seven-year NFL career. It will be Heinicke's second start in Washington, his first coming in the playoffs when he came within eight points of besting Tom Brady.
One person who's not worried about Heinicke is teammate and star receiver Terry McLaurin.
"It's unique, obviously. Seeing Fitz go down is not what we wanted to see at all, especially in your first game," McLaurin told 106.7 The Fan's Grant Paulsen and Danny Rouhier. "He's a captain for us and he's been great over the offseason, just galvanizing us and having us confident going into the first game. So seeing him go down was tough."
"The luxury we had, we had a guy who's played in big games, came in in big situations and had success in Taylor," he said. "You know, I have the utmost confidence in him going forward and I had confidence in him last year when he came in for the playoff game."
"Although it's a quarterback change, it's a familiar face," McLaurin continued. "The way he just play-makes, keeps plays alive and you're never dead when he has the ball in his hands. When I was running literally parallel with him, I had a feeling that he was gonna toss me that ball. We just try to make things happen."
"I'm looking forward to trying to build that chemistry even stronger with him that we had throughout the offseason," he said, "And Fitz gets healthy and we'll see where we go from there. But we're really looking forward to seeing what Taylor will bring to our offense this week as we go into a tough division game."
After Sunday's loss to the Chargers, McLaurin is actually thankful for the quick four-day turnaround, a "chance to get that taste out of your mouth [really fast], especially in the division and at home on primetime."
"We haven't beat them since I've been here since 2019," he noted, "and they swept us last year, so they've kind of had our number to a certain degree and we've just got to come out ready to execute on all cylinders, not necessarily have any self-inflicted wounds and see where we're at. But they had a battle over the weekend as well and only one team can come out with a win, so hopefully we can be that team."
Indeed, the Giants have had Washington's number for some time. Washington hasn't beaten the Giants since Week 8 of the 2018 season (three weeks before Alex Smith's devastating injury, for context). In fact, in going 0-5 since, Washington's managed to accomplish one extraordinary feat: making Daniel Jones feel like he belongs in the NFL.
Jones is 8-19 in 27 career starts for the Giants. Half of those wins have come against the Washington, against whom he's a perfect 4-0, with 901 passing yards, eight touchdowns and three interceptions for a flat 100 passer rating. He's also scampered for 123 yards on the ground against Washington.
Coming off Sunday's season-opening loss, there are no moral victories for McLaurin, but there are positive takeaways, key areas of the game from which they hope to carry momentum and improve upon.
"I mean honestly, you want to win them all so there's no moral victories, there's no really things you want to hang your hat on. It's like, at the end of the day, you didn't win the game," he said. "But how I feel like the momentum we had during the game, we created turnovers, we had pretty good field position. We just want to finish better in the red zone when we get down there and minimalize the mistakes on all three phases of the game, and that gives yourself a better chance of coming out on top."
"If we can do that for four quarters, then we have a chance of having success," he said. "But in this league, you can't make mistakes and not capitalize and expect to win, especially against a good football team. We're gonna look to minimize that. Obviously it's Week 1, but we're not taking any solace in 'Ah, it was close' or 'we were in position.'
"We didn't get the job done and that's what it comes down to, but we're working our butts off to try to make that right."
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